DECEMBER 2017
ASTON
Dreaming of a Paperless World
by KIM DONG HO <Aston Ecosystem> Reporter
The history of documentation began with the dawn of humanity. Mankind recorded information by painting drawings on cave walls or using hieroglyphs, after which it started printing them on paper, and now electronic documents have come into being with the advent of the Internet. Mr. Seung-gi Kim, CEO of CERTON, decided to take this one step further and launched ‘ASTON,’ a decentralized document verification platform that taps into advanced blockchain technologies and cutting-edge security solutions. Through their original technology,’the X-Chain,‘ Aston addressed the shortcomings of the traditional linear-structured blockchain by enabling stributed storage of documents using a multidimensional block structure. As such, Aston is now recognized as a global document verification platform that blurs existing regional and industrial boundaries. BACKGROUND Mr. Kim first built his business model around ‘electronic IOUs.’ An IOU, or promissory note, is a document written between the debtor and creditor when a monetary or non-mone-
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tary loan takes place. As the document proves the exchange of cash or physicals, verifying or ensuring the credibility of the contents therein is critical. As he was seeking ways to acquire third party trust, Mr. Kim came across the blockchain technology. On a blockchain, transactions of cryptocurrencies are verified, the transaction history is disclosed to all participants, and cross-references are made every time a transaction takes place to prevent forgery or modification of information. For these reasons, the blockchain is referred to by some as a ‘public ledger for transactions.’ Drawn by such properties of the blockchain, Mr. Kim developed a proprietary technology named ‘X-Chain’ and unveiled the document verification platform created with that technology, Aston, to the world. FAST AND CREDIBLE DOCUMENT VERIFICATION PLATFORM Aston is a blockchain-based document verification platform. It was born from the idea that although a wide variety of electronic documents currently exist, verifications for the bulk of them are taking place offline. The goal is to verify
all of these documents online through Aston eventually. By utilizing the ‘XChain,’ the volume and speed of data processing have been substantially enhanced. ‘X-Chain‘ only asks for a consensus among related blocks in verifying information in a new block, which is a much advanced technology compared to that of the conventional blockchain which requires all blocks to reach a consensus. This new technology greatly enhances efficiency across the entire process of saving, accessing, issuing and transferring electronic documents. Another upside is that the technology can also be applied to a wide range of systems, making it easy to deploy and commercialize. Moreover, Smart-Pass-On, a security solution based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and biometrics authentication (FIDO), provides unparalleled security to Aston users. A PAPERLESS WORLD Thus far, the engagement of a trusted third party was necessary for ensuring credibility in all transactions. Govern-